


Please Don't Laugh

by mintandmarmalade



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project, Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Humor, Gay Matsuura Kanan, Relationship Advice, and that count but also i feel like it's just a given, i was looking to see if there were any kananmari specific tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 02:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14322825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintandmarmalade/pseuds/mintandmarmalade
Summary: Life was harder with Mari around. Not because of the rifts that formed in their relationship when she reappeared in Kanan’s life, or because she hid her struggles behind a smile until she collapsed under them.No. It’s because Mari’s a shameless flirt and Kanan can’t handle it.





	Please Don't Laugh

Life was harder with Mari around. It took a lot of hard thinking, but eventually Kanan ended up at that conclusion. 

“Congratulations on noticing,” Dia said in a dry tone when she brought it up, sparing a quick eye roll before returning to her tea. “Was the month after she returned from a forced two-year interruption to your relationship not enough?” 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Kanan winced, tugging at the hair tie around her wrist. 

Even when she acted like she didn’t care, it was nice having Dia around for relationship advice. If any of the first or second years saw her this anxious, Kanan would probably stop showing up to practice, and maybe school. It’d be hard to avoid them at the dive shop - maybe if she wore a snorkeling mask all the time, they wouldn’t realize it was her? 

She let the hair tie snap. There she went avoiding the problem again. 

“Oh? Then how?” 

Sinking down in her chair, Kanan breathed out a sigh and prayed that by some miracle, nobody else she knew was in Uchiura’s only cafe on a Sunday afternoon. Then, for extra measure, she leaned across the table with a hand cupped around her mouth before whispering, “She flirts _all the time,_ Dia. She never stops.” 

Dia paused for a second - not to consider the gravity of the situation, but to process that _that_ was what Kanan was so worried about. 

“...That’s it?” 

Twisting into a grim look, Kanan nodded.

She tried to match the expression, but let out a laugh. “Oh, I thought you had a real problem.” 

“There’s nothing funny about this,” Kanan deadpanned, ready to slap away the hand Dia held in front of her mouth like a 90s anime ojou. “It was cute at first but it’s getting to be an issue.” 

Letting her laughter die down, Dia rested her chin on her palm and said, “Mari has been like that forever. It was just as obnoxious back then.” 

Kanan hated her knowing tone, mostly because it was justified. She _knew_ it was justified. “Yeah, but now that she’s my girlfriend for real, it’s a little…” 

She rolled her eyes again, as if to say ‘I had to deal with this alone while you were off playing your teenage angst game so you have no right to complain’. Kanan shivered - it was almost like she could hear the words out loud. 

“I fail to see how anything is different now that you two are a couple. Surely it’s better than her leaving the country for two years?” 

It absolutely was _not._

The realization that her point wasn’t coming through was settling in. For this to work, she would have to bring out the big guns. 

With her face fixed downwards, Kanan gritted her teeth and forced out, “Yesterday we were on a walk and we passed a garden.” 

“Okay.” 

Just thinking about it made a blush crawl up her cheeks. “So we started walking through it and there were all these flowers.”

“I think that’s a given, but go on.”

“And then she said that if there was a flower for every time she thought about me, we’d be walking there forever.”

“Oh my god.”

The tension that had been building up in her let itself out as a relieved sigh. “Yeah.”

“That’s hilarious.”

“Wait, what?” The shock nearly made her jump. It passed through her like a jolt of lightning. The sight of her best friend laughing so casually at her confession made her go red all the way to her ears. She was one word away from puffing out steam.

“I’m sorry, I know this is important to you but I-” Dia’s sentence cut itself off before it could make its way out.

“Could you stop that?” That laugh was irritating Kanan more and more by the second.

Almost showily, waving at her face, she took in a deep breath and calmed herself down. “I’m sorry. But I don’t see why this worries you so much.” 

“Because it’s embarrassing!” She was starting to regret asking Dia to help her. Maybe Riko would have understood her better. Or maybe Riko would have just gotten more embarrassed than she was. 

“But with Mari, this is _normal.”_

“It’s relative! I can’t deal with this much if I know it’s for me. I’m not _you.”_

Besides, it wasn’t just that. It was like Mari was trying to torture her. Sure, they had jokingly flirted around when they were first-years - a bad pickup line here, a cheeky comment there. But that was a long time ago, and things had changed since then. Back then, they weren’t dating - well, maybe there could’ve been something if they hadn’t made so many mistakes, but still, they were just friends. It was different. It wasn’t real before. 

_Real._ It was real now. At least, Kanan thought it was. They were officially dating, so that made it real, right? Even if it felt like so much had changed, and maybe like being in a relationship wasn’t as great as they thought it would be. Either way, good or not, it was real. 

Maybe they would have been better off as friends. Kanan scratched her cheek as the thought swam around in her mind. Before her eyes could start swimming, she forced herself to concentrate on something. Anything to distract her. The surface of the table was clean, unpatterned, a little bumpy. If Kanan could focus on the cool artificial wood, if the sticky patches where someone had spilled a drink could be her only problems, that would be nice. Easy.

“You do know that she talks about you all the time, right?”

“Huh?” She jerked up her head, or maybe it moved on its own.

Dia took an agonizingly slow sip from her tea, purposely drawing out the suspense. Then, with an obviously fake nonchalant tone, she complained, “Whenever I’m alone with her, she just goes on about how in love she is with you. It’s cute, but it makes filing paperwork rather difficult.” 

Something inside Kanan sparked. “That often?” 

“Nearly every day.” 

Her heart grew hot. 

Suddenly, it felt like she was underwater. It was such a familiar sensation that she had more trouble realizing she was breathing air than accepting the change of state as the cause of the wave of emotions washing over her. For some reason, Kanan couldn’t find a way to say what she wanted to. Her mind was fumbling around too much to form thoughts, or even words. 

Waterlogged, she stuttered. “Wow...that’s…”

Dia’s eyes softened. “If she loves you that much, it can’t be so bad.” 

“Yeah.” Kanan’s face shifted into a small smile, then a grin. “Yeah!” 

Suddenly, a loud noise filled the cafe: something between a squeal and a grimace, making its way out as a sort of _“guuUUU”_ sound. It was coming from the table next to them - or, actually, it wasn’t really a table. When Kanan turned around, all she saw was a barricade of menus. 

There was no time to be confused; the “guuu” was quickly followed by a rushed, hushed _“Chika-chan--”._

Her eyebrows shot up as she repeated, “Chika-chan?” 

Then, in one swift punch accompanied by a loud call of “I CAN’T TAKE IT!”, the barricade bursted open from the inside and fell away, revealing the rest of Aqours squished into one booth, huddled down like they were trying to hide. All of them, that is, except for Chika, who ran to the other table with reckless abandon.

“Kanan!” She cried, throwing her arms around her friend. “Congratulations! I had no idea!” 

Caught off guard and still trying to piece together the situation, Kanan stuttered, “T-thanks…”

Everything was happening at once, and she could barely process it. She thought she saw the rest of the girls climb out of the booth, and heard the second years scolding Chika for giving them away, and Ruby apologizing to Dia for accidentally telling Chika she and Kanan were meeting up secretly which made Chika so curious that she just had to tag along, but she wasn’t too sure. It all came in a daze. So this is what she got for wanting to talk to a lifelong friend in private, huh? 

And then, sounding over the rush in her ears, she blinked to a thought that snapped her out of it. “Wait, if you’re all here, then that means-”

“Surprise!” Mari called, with just a hint of bashfulness in her voice, as she climbed out from underneath the other table. 

In that moment, Kanan realized that they had become the center of focus in the cafe. That made it so much worse. 

“Mari…” The name came out more full of awe than the half-bitter tone she was going for. Later she would wonder if she just couldn’t help it; for now, she had bigger issues to deal with. 

The girl in question leaned over the table with her chin resting in her hands, one leg popped up behind her, so her and Kanan’s faces nearly touched. So close, Kanan couldn’t see the grin her eyes implied. Ever-so-teasingly, she exclaimed, “I’m sorry! But to think that my Kanan came all the way out here to ask for relationship advice - I must be deeper in this thing than I thought!”

WIth that, Mari threw her arms around Kanan, pushing and pulling her back and forth until she had squeezed out a spot on the small booth’s bench, and didn’t let go even once she sat down. 

Kanan was making a conscious effort to keep a straight face, but it was becoming more impossible by the minute. The red creeped up her skin like water filling up a glass. It was strange - normally she would have assumed she was embarrassed, but now it was...different. 

Something had definitely changed. Maybe Mari had some big revelation when she went away and that was why Kanan started losing sleep thinking about her when she came back. Or maybe it was because standing against the rest of Aqours, it became clearer than ever that the way she felt when she looked at Mari was special. 

Or maybe Kanan used too many maybe’s when she had known all along that the girl sitting with her who made her heart beat out of her chest was the same girl she had been holding hands with her whole life.

Maybe it wasn’t harder this way.

For now, she’d hope Mari understood that too. And for now, Kanan would hide the smile playing on her lips, and turn to the girl she loved the most, and scoldingly say, “You’ll break my shoulders.” 

That was enough for now. 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](no-brand-gays.tumblr.com) // [twitter](twitter.com/mesokicovers)
> 
> honestly i'm not likely to write more ll fic since i had just had this sitting around for a long time (i think i first started it in july?) and poked around over the months before deciding to finish it tonight. still, thank you for reading!


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